


Mythos and Mayhem

by Corvid_Knight



Category: Multi-Fandom
Genre: Fandomstuck, i dont remember whos dating who help me, just typing in the tags is enough to make me hyperventilate, uhhhhh convuluted plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 13:05:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15219773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: I'm just uhhh...posting this off my old DeviantArt. From 2016, maybe my first posted fanfic of any kind, jesus fuck. Previously titled "Fandom!Stuck In 2018, Send Me To Fucking Jail" until I came back and uh, fixed that.





	1. Chapter 1

You are the CREEPYPASTA FANDOM. Many people are scared of you. You wish they weren't. You're a nice person, actually, regardless of how bloody a lot of your content is. At least you have a few new friends, like Homestuck and Hetalia. And the Big Three (Supernatual, Doctor Who, and Sherlock) seem to like you okay. 

Right now you're waiting for Pokemon to answer the email you sent him asking if he can come over and hang out tonight, maybe watch a movie. It's kind of weird that it's taking your moirail this long to respond—he's usually quick to pick up an offer of movie-watching. Maybe he has other plans? Maybe he's upset at you? Maybe he's spending some time on his planet? Maybe—

Your computer beeps, alerting you to an incoming email and breaking your chain of thought. It's not Pokemon. You don't recognise the email—warriOrOFjustice@fanbase.net—and the subject is "will sOmebody please listen tO me FOr Once?" But it doesn't seem to be an ad, so you open it out of sheer curiousity. 

"sOmething bad and weird is happening. i can't use my name because nOne OF yOu trust me. if yOu dOn't want things tO get wOrse, message me back." 

That's all. You read it twice. You can't decide whether it's a threat, a warning, or a prank. After some consideration, you forward the email to Doctor Who and compose a reply. 

"Hi. I'm kind of confused as to why you decided to tell me about this—I'm not exactly the most important fandom here. What kind of bad things are happening?" 

warriOrOFjustice answers almost immediately. 

"yOurs is the Only email i knOw, idiOt. except superwhOlOck's and they knOw me. listen. fandOms are acting strange, fighting amOungst themselves, and while usually i'd be happy tO let all oF yOu cleanse yOurselves OFF the face of the earth i have a Feeling that yOu'll take me with yOu. i need sOmeOne to vOuch FOr me sO i can cOme back up and deal with whOever is causing this." 

Your eyes are immediately drawn to the only all-caps word in the whole message. You still take the time to read through the whole thing before you forward this one to Doctor Who and type a reply. 

"OFF, what the hell do you want? No one's fighting, not that I've heard of. You've got a lot of nerve, fucking around with me after what you did. Go bother someone else." 

So maybe that was less than polite. But you're still upset about the whole thing with the cupcake, Homestuck, and the knife. Still, he answers. 

"lOOK. i'm sOrry, iF that's what yOu need tO hear tO take me seriOusly. yOu're the Only fandOm that didn't just threaten tO have me transFerred sOmewhere wOrse than where i am. and things are Falling apart here. i knOw yOu dOn't like me but sOmebOdy needs tO dO sOmething." 

You've never heard OFF this purely sincere before. Usually he's either deadpan sarcastic or focused on a single thing to the exclusion of all else. He almost never lies, you know that, and if he says there's a problem, there very likely is. And Doctor Who hasn't answered you back, so you don't have support from that quarter. 

You're still wondering what to do when someone starts hammering on your door. Whoever it is sounds very upset. 

You get up, stand a good four feet away from the door, and extend a tentacle to turn the knob. If the fandom on the other side wants to hurt you, you'll be able to get the jump on them. Hopefully. 

But when the door opens, it's just Homestuck. He looks around in confusion for a second before he spots you. "Hetalia's missing," he says. "So is Doctor Who. And I can't get Supernatural to listen to me because he can't find Sherlock." 

"Uh-oh. Hold on a second." You turn back to your computer and type another message, a single sentence. 

"Has anyone gone missing on your floor?" 

As you wait for OFF to answer, you pull Homestuck over and let him read the messages you've already received. He finishes and shakes his head. 

"OFF's a loose cannon...but he's right, this time. Creepypasta, things are falling apart up here, too." Homestuck runs his hands through his own black hair, messing it up even more than usual. You've never seen him so upset. 

The alert pings. 

"i dOn't knOw. maybe. prObably. i dO my best tO steer clear OF the Others here." 

You sigh. "Wait one second," you tell Homestuck. Then you clear your mind, think of OFF's masked face, and do something that you're sure is a bad idea. You teleport from your room to...wherever your least favorite fandom is. 

You don't stay long enough to really see where he is, either. As soon as the shadows of between-places retreat enough that you see OFF, you grab his wrist and teleport back, dragging him with you. 

Unfortunately, you pull him a bit harder than you need to, and since he's not expecting it, he overbalances and slams into you, knocking you to the floor and landing on top of you. 

"What in the name of—hellspawn, how dare you—" 

You shove him off and get to your feet. "You said you wanted to come back," you snap, wrapping a tentacle around each of his arms and hauling him upright. "This was the fastest way." 

OFF snarls wordlessly and tries to twist out of your grip. "I hate teleporting," he mutters, when you let go of him. "How bad is it up here?" 

You look at Homestuck, who shrugs. "Let's go see," you say. 

OFF leads the way out the door into the hallway...into a madhouse of shouting fandoms. You stop short as soon as you're actually in the hall itself, and look around in amazement. 

It seems like every fandom in the building is here, and every one of them is arguing with another one. You have never heard such a sound before. As you look around, you see that some of the arguments are close to becoming fistfights or worse. You're trying to decide which one is going to be the most dangerous so you can separate them when one of the doors that line the hall opens and Supernatural steps out. 

"ENOUGH!"

You didn't know that it was possible for a shout to echo like that in this hallway. Everyone stops fighting, stops yelling, and turns to Supernatural.

For the first time in your memory, he's fully spread his wings. They are…huge. The corridor is at least ten feet wide, but Supernatural's black wings fill it, feathers brushing against the ceiling and bending as they hit the walls. His eyes look a lot like yours do sometimes: bottomless pits of blackness.

"Stop fighting. Right now." He's stopped shouting, but you're more afraid of his soft, calm tone. "We have a problem, okay? And it's bigger than your need to rip each other apart."

Star Trek and Star Wars say, perfectly in sync, "He started it!" then glare at each other. Sonic and Assassin's Creed eye each other warily, each obviously wondering if they could take out the other before he had a chance to move. The Brony fandom and MLP are mouthing insults to each other.

You're slowly beginning to realize that this is not something normal. "Supernatural…something weird is going on." The way he glares at you confirms it. "OFF, how do you feel?"

"None of your business, hellspawn!" the masked fandom snaps.

A few minutes ago you'd reached an unspoken truce with him. "MLP, how do you feel?"

"Stay the fuck away from her," Brony snarls.

"Leave Creepypasta out of this," MLP snaps at him. "He's not the one who—"

"Okay, calm down," you interrupt, before she can say something she'll regret later. "All of you just…calm. Down. Take a step back and listen to me." You take a deep breath. You can feel what everyone else must be feeling: a subtle but deep rage, like there's someone whispering something just quietly enough that you can't quite hear. You didn't notice before because you feel kind of like that all the time, but you've learned to just tune it out and carry on. "Something's making all of us want to fight each other."

"Not me." Homestuck speaks up from behind Supernatural. "I just want to find Hetalia, Doctor Who, and Sherlock."

You nod at him, feeling a little annoyed that he inturrupted you. Except you're not really annoyed—it's just that weird mind-control thing or whatever it is. It's getting stronger. "Homestuck is right. So is Supernatural. At least three fandoms are missing, and something is setting the rest of us at each other's throats. We need to focus."

OFF glares at you, his eyes glowing gold through his mask. Surprisingly, instead of challenging or attacking you he asks, "Does anyone know of any others who are missing?"

For a minute or so no one says anything. Then, "I have not seen Touhou for a while," Assassin's Creed offers reluctantly. "Her room is down the hall from mine, and usually she stops by to visit, but the last time I saw her was three days ago."

"She's been hanging around with Matrix," Star Wars says. "They were talking about going out to one of the border planets to hunt monsters or something."

Supernatural nods, folding his wings. "Matrix asked me to come with him, but I was kinda busy—"

"Okay, so those two are probably okay." You mentally call up your list of all the other fandoms living on this floor. "Okay, has anyone seen Adventure Time in the last two days?"

Homestuck, MLP, and Brony raise their hands.

"Merlin?"

Two hands go up.

"Gravity Falls?" Yes. "Final Fantasy?" Yes. "Stargate?" Yes. "Night Vale?"

No one raises their hand, but Star Trek says, "Last I heard, he was planning to visit Floor Thirteen. Something about wheat, or snakes…I dunno."

You think for a second and decide that NV is probably fine, wherever he is. "Okay. Bones?" Supernatural raises his hand. "Pokemon?" No hands go up. You feel your stomach drop. "So Poke's missing too." Your moirial. Now you know how Homestuck feels, with Hetalia missing. "Uh…l…"

You know that you need to keep talking. Keep listing possibly missing fandoms, keep distracting the fandoms here from killing each other. But…you really, REALLY don't want to. You want to go and start searching for Pokemon. You're perfectly willing to tear the entire FanBase apart if you need to.

"Cool down, hellspawn." OFF has his baseball bat out. He's smacking it against his palm, and you wonder of he's going to come after you with it. "We'll find all of them. And then we'll tear apart whoever or whatever took them." He reaches up to adjust his mask, settling it more firmly over his face. His halo sways slightly. "The time lord disappeared on his way to the fifty-second floor, correct?"

Supernatural nods. Homestuck adds, "That's where Hetalia was going, too…but how did you know—"

OFF nods curtly. "Figure out who's not here, who's missing. Hellspawn and I will go…investigate. And cleanse, if neccesary."

"I'm coming—" MLP starts.

"No!" You and Brony say it at the exact same time. He scowls at you, but you don't really care.

Supernatural shakes his head. "They're right, MLP. You're better off safe, down here, where you can heal people if we need you to."

She pouts.

"Let's move," OFF growls. You follow him towards the elevator.

When you step out of the elevator (with OFF right on your heels) the hall is deserted. That in itself is not worrisome; a lot of the fandoms up here are kind of antisocial.

With recent developments, though…

OFF taps your shoulder. "You go left. I go right," he whispers. "Shout if you find anything off."

You manage not to laugh at his unintentional pun, and nod. "Send anyone you find downstairs," you say in a low voice that's actually quieter than a whisper. "Safer."

The masked fandom nods, and the two of you go your separate ways.

You start opening doors, having a quick look around, then moving on. You don't know who half these rooms belong to, or if anyone even stays in them at all. You don't see anyone. But you don't see any blood, any bodies, or any signs of struggle either in the first seventeen.

You can tell the difference in the eighteenth before you even touch the doorknob. There's an ornate crest on the door, and you realize that you know who this room belongs to: Hannibal.

It smells like blood. Hannibal's room always has a faint scent of blood, aged layers of it, but this is very fresh and very strong.

You turn the knob, but the door won't open. Something's blocking it, and you have to brace your tentacles on the opposite wall to gain enough purchase to shove the door open.

Oddly enough, it was the marble countertop. It's been torn off the counter and flung against the door. The whole room looks worse for wear—there are gouges out of the walls, made with something large and sharp, the table is in pieces scattered across the floor, and there's  
blood splattered on every surface like dark paint.

"Hannibal?" You don't want to shout his name for fear that whatever made this mess is still around. "Hannibal, are you there? Are you okay?"

No answer, so you walk slowly to the door that leads farther into the apartment. Your tentacles are coiling and writhing around you, and you can't seem to control them.

This door opens easily. The room beyond is darkened, and you don't see the shadow rising in front of you until it's too late to dodge.


	2. Chapter 2

You are the HANNIBAL FANDOM. Usually your greatest concern is identifying those who are too rude to live and thus may be eaten, but right now you're in no condition to bother yourself with any of that.

The…thing that came to you almost killed you. And now it's back, with its dark tentacles, and your only hope is to catch it by surprise.

You tighten your grip on your knife and push yourself to your feet, raising the weapon high—

Almost too late you recognise the luminescent scarlet eyes in the bone-pale face. You let go of the knife, and it clatters on your uncarpeted floor.

Your old neighbor catches you before you can follow it. "Hannibal!" Creepypasta groans, wrapping his tentacles around the most obvious of your wounds. "Holy Zalgo in a bucket…what happened to you?"

He's so polite, asking about your health instead of pointing out the fact that you just tried to kill him. You rather like Creepypasta. "Ugly monster thing," you say. That's a terrible description, but you're in some pain and rather lightheaded. Getting up to ambush Creepypasta was a mistake. "Tried to eat me. I—"

What did you do, exactly? There is something that you need to tell Creepypasta, something about the monster that he needs to know if he's going to survive any encounter with it…but you can't remember.

"It shimmers," you say instead. That was the first thing you noticed about it. That, and it had tentacles. Lots of tentacles. But the thing shimmered and sparkled hypnotically, and you almost let it get you because it was so pretty.

But then the sparkliness reminded you of Twilight. She annoys you so—that girl has no manners whatsoever. And she looks delicious. You've never been alone with her, or she would have long since been the main course at one of your dinners.

Creepypasta shakes you gently, and you realize that you've closed your eyes. How rude. "Sorry," you mumble. And you remember what you needed to tell him. "It doesn't like salt." The thing didn't seem to minded being stabbed with a kitchen knife, and you'd probably be dead if you hadn't impulsively thrown your economy-sized container of salt at the thing. On contact with the crystalline substance, the monster's iridescent skin had shrivelled, and it had made an unholy screeching sound and vanished into thin air.

Salt reminds you of the black-winged fandom from downstairs. You'd love to have a chance to prepare him. Maybe with a side dish of the grey-skinned one? Or would he taste better with the antisocial one who always wears that stupid scarf…

You're vaguely aware that Creepypasta is talking to you, but it seems infinitely easier to just close your eyes and go to sleep, rude though that may be.

* * *

You are the CREEPYPASTA FANDOM again…unfortunately because Hannibal just passed out. He's bleeding, despite the pressure that you're putting on the worst of his wounds, and you've got a feeling that he's worse off than you think. And the monster that did this to him could still be around.

Time to get out of here.

You tighten your grip on Hannibal, center your thoughts on OFF, and teleport. Shadows rip apart your surroundings and reassemble them into a room with movie posters plastering the walls. It's deserted except for OFF.

Behind his mask, OFF's eyes widen. "What did you do, hellspawn?" he asks in a low voice.

"We need to leave," you tell him. Before he can react, you wind your free tentacle around his arm.

Teleporting yourself is easy. Teleporting someone else isn't that much of a challenge. Teleporting Hannibal's unconscious body and OFF, who immediately digs his metaphorical heels into the ground and projects a stubborn aura of "don't you dare even think of moving me"…that's almost impossible. You do it anyway. You go down thirty-one levels, straight to Supernatural. Releasing OFF and shoving him so he staggers away, you say quickly, "If you see a shimmering thing with tentacles, throw salt on it. Where's MLP?"

To his credit, Supernatural shows no surprise at your sudden appearence. He doesn't ask about Hannibal, either—he just snaps, "Two floors up, room 2356!"

You nod and teleport again just as OFF snarls and leaps for you.

When the shadows clear, you almost fall. You can't feel your legs or your tentacles. In fact, when you look down to check that you brought Hannibal with you, you see that your tentacles have dissipated into black smoke and the wounded fandom is lying at your feet. Not good.

MLP isn't here either. The only one here is the Brony fandom, who looks very surprised to see you.

"Where's MLP?" you ask him. "Hannibal—he's hurt, she needs to heal him—" You're not sure that you can teleport again, but you'll have to try.

"Calm down." Brony kneels next to Hannibal. "MLP isn't the only one with a horn."

"Oh…" You see the white spiral horn, the unicorn's horn, in the middle of Brony's forehead as he runs one hand through his Mohawk. "I…I forgot." You lean against the wall. At this point, you need the support. "I…oh, crap…"

Maybe Brony reaches out to catch you as you slide down the wall. You're falling into unconsciousness too fast to tell for sure.

* * *

You are the NIGHT VALE FANDOM—no, scratch that, it's way too weird in his head. You make an existential U-turn and end up as SUPERNATURAL. (You're one of the Big Three—your name can stand alone, without "the" and "fandom.")

You're itching to throw some salt on all the demon-like fandoms in the room. Homestuck, Creepypasta, Night Vale…but there's bigger things to worry about. Bigger targets for salting.

The only two fandoms who know anything about the monster—if there is a monster—are unconscious. OFF is obviously ready to start wreaking havoc. Homestuck is eying OFF warily, probably wondering if it's worth it to knock him out. Brony's standing with his back to the wall, glancing between you and Hannibal, who's lying on the couch, unconscious. Night Vale is…well, he's smiling. Unnervingly. And his third eye is rolling from side to side and glowing a soft purple that matches his slowly writhing tattoos.

Night Vale freaking creeps you out. You're not even sure how he got here or what he's doing here.

And Creepypasta is on the floor, in an inelegant heap. No one wants to disturb him, especially not you. Creepypasta has an unfortunate tendency to react violently to physical contact when he's asleep, and you're sure that it extends to unconsciousness as well.

"Okay," you say. "How long until we can wake Hannibal up?"

Brony shrugs. "I dunno. I've never healed someone that badly injured before. Could be any time now—"

"Good—"

"Or," he continues, interrupting you, "it could be hours. Days even. I don't have a lot of experience with this."

"Well…shit." You shake your head and look around the room at the others. "Anyone else got any ideas?"

No one says anything for a few minutes. Then OFF growls in frustration (Homestuck tenses visibly), reaches up, and removes his white mask.

"We're going to have to fight," he says, catching the surprised look you give him. A second pair of eyes, blue instead of yellow, slowly open under his normal ones. "I fight better when I can see without barriers." He grins at Homestuck. "Ah, don't look at me like that. I've decided to take a break from dealing with all the filth in this place and concentrate on whatever it is that's taking fandoms."

"Okay then…" You're not sure you trust OFF. But then again…what difference does it make? "But that doesn't help us decide how to find it."

Creepypasta groans, twitches, and slowly sits up. "Ow…" He shakes his head slowly, pressing his palms against his forehead. "I'm never doing that again."

"You okay?" Homestuck asks him.

"I'm fine…mostly." Creepypasta lowers his hands and looks around, orienting on Brony after a second. "Hannibal—is he—"

"He'll be okay," Brony says. "Something tore him up pretty bad, but I'm good enough with my aspect to fix stuff like that. He's out of it, though."

"Did you see what did it?" you ask.

Creepypasta shakes his head again, and winces. "No. He told me that it shimmered and it had tentacles. Oh—you'll love this—it hates salt. That was all he said before he passed out."

"Salt…" That's your favorite weapon, followed closely by holy water, exorcisms, and demon traps. You're struck by a horrible thought: what if this monster is something of yours, one of your demons somehow made tangible and let loose into the FanBase?

"Supernatural—" Night Vale starts.

"Well, we've got plently of salt," you say briskly, before he can say anything else. "So where is it?"

Creepypasta shrugs. "Somewhere on Floor 52. Maybe. If it hasn't run somewhere else."

"Excuse me," Night Vale says politely. He doesn't speak loudly, but his voice still somehow seems like the most important thing in the room. "I might be able to help."

"How?" It's not that you doubt him. It's just…sometimes Night Vale's suggestions make no sense to anyone but him.

"You, my friends, are worrying about the wrong monster." Night Vale's third eye blinks. "What you've seen is the least of many, and the greatest of them all is one of us, a simple fandom. He—"

"Night Vale, please." You rub your forehead. It's the same whenever he talks about anything—conversations become monologues, explanations become performances. And something about Night Vale just discourages inturruptions. "Would you happen to know where we could find the   
fandom who's causing this?"

"Of course." Night Vale shrugs, and his purple tattoos reposition themselves in a way that's acutely disturbing. "But you can't get there from here."

Creepypasta groans. "I'm going to have to teleport all of you, aren't I?"

"Well, yes." Night Vale's eyes flash from purple to pure demonic black for a second. You have to fight off the urge to reach into your pocket and cone out with salt. Then he blinks, and they're normal (realitively) again. "He's still trying to recruit me. I'm surprised that he hasn't come after you, Creepypasta. After all, you're as much his descendant as I am."

You blink. "He's his what?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was written. before I read homestuck.


	3. Chapter 3

You are the CREEPYPASTA FANDOM. You aren't feeling so hot right now. You've got a hell of a headache from overexerting whatever part of yourself you use to teleport, you're kind of scared of whoever took all the missing fandoms, and you're confused.

So is Supernatural. And OFF, who's actually taken off his mask for once, letting you actually see his expression. "So the big bad squid is Hellspawn's ancestor?"

"That can't be—" Supernatural begins.

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Night Vale looks directly at you, maybe directly through you. "His name is Mythos."

"I..." It's more than familiar—it's a word that strikes a chord inside you, like it's a part of your own name. "I know the name. Almost."

"He is older than almost any of us. Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, even Lord Of The Rings...he remembers when they were but infants. He is old—but he is not weak." Night Vale's violet eyes are focused, not on you, but on something far beyond. "It will take all of us to retrieve what he's taken, and the longer we wait the worse our chances become."

You nod. "Then we'd better get going." You're not 100% sure that you can move everyone from here to wherever you need to be, but you have to do it anyway. "You can direct me, right?"

Night Vale smiles. You wish he hadn't. "I can do better than that."

You wonder what he means. It doesn't matter. "Everyone who's going to fight, get close to me. You need to be in contact with me for this to work."

Supernatural digs around in his pockets for a second, nods, and puts one hand on your shoulder. Brony lays his hand on your other shoulder. OFF hesitates for a second, then takes your hand. His skin is neither warm nor cold, which is strange, since your body is colder than most people's. Homestuck grabs your wrist, just above OFF's hand. 

Night Vale, still smiling, takes your other hand. The tattoos on his hand are slowly moving towards you, gaining substance as they get closer. When they're close enough to touch you, they're tangible enough for you to feel. 

"Close your eyes," Night Vale says cheerfully.

Everyone else does. You don't. You watch Night Vale's tattoos as they slide towards your skin, becoming more three-dimensional as they go, becoming a tentacle, an extra appendage. When it reaches your hand, it hesitates for a second, then suddenly dives downward, becoming a flat pattern of ink again. It feels weird and mildly painful, like pins and needles. 

For an instant you see what Night Vale sees. He's looking at you, and you don't like seeing yourself through his eyes. For an even shorter instant, a unit of time so small that it barely exists at all, you see that he's looking through your eyes, seeing you seeing him seeing you reflected into infinity like an endless series of mirrors. 

Then he blinks, and it's gone.

"Close your eyes, Creepypasta," Night Vale says again. 

You do. 

Night Vale does something to your mind, and suddenly you're somewhere else.

* * *

You are the OFF FANDOM. You dislike teleportation, especially when you don't know where you're going or who and what will be waiting for you, but this is the second—no, third—time today that you've been teleported more or less against your will. 

You open your eyes, both pairs, as soon as you feel the change. It's dark here, but that doesn't matter much to you—you can see just fine. 

The first thing you see is a writhing mass of tentacles. As you glance around, you realize that whatever it is surrounds you and your four allies on all sides, coming close but not quite touching any of you. 

Supernatural reaches into the pocket of his trenchcoat and pulls out a handful of white powder. He throws it outward at the tentacle-beast, scoring a direct hit—not that that's difficult; the thing is huge. 

There's a sound like the screeching of damned souls—enough to make even you flinch, and Brony and Homestuck clap their hands over their ears—and the tentacle thing recoils. Most of it. It leaves behind the bits of itself that got hit with salt, and you realize that it's not one beast, it's a whole shitload of them. The ones that got left behind, the ones that Supernatural salted, keep shrieking and whipping their tentacles around. 

You dart forward and swing your weapon—at some point it stopped being a baseball bat and started being a broadsword—through the closest monster of the three, cutting it into two messy halves. 

This is your first look at one of the things. It looks like what you would get if you crossed a slug with an octopus—gooey, greenish-grey, and strangely liquid, like it would conform to any container it was placed in. Its body is about the size of a large dog or a small pony, and it's dissolving where the salt touched it. It has more tentacles than you care to count, and set in the end of each tentacle is a wide, staring eye. 

The other two are exactly the same, and by the time you finish dispatching them, the first one's corpse has dissolved into a slimy, greenish puddle. 

Your sword is beslimed with the monsters'...well, just with the monsters, you guess. You have a feeling it's not going to come clean easily. Then you dismiss that—when you get out of here alive, you can take all the time you need to clean your sword—and turn back to the others. "So. What now?" 

Supernatural's already got another handful of salt ready, but Homestuck grabs him before he can throw it. Brony's gone almost the same color as the monsters, and you wonder if he's going to be sick. 

Night Vale glances at Creepypasta. "Wait for it," he says calmly. The tattoos on his arms are lifting away, thickening, and becoming tentacles like the arms of an octopus. "Wait for it..."

"Wait for what?" You don't want to wait. You want to turn some more of the slugtopi into sludge. "Why do I need to—" 

"Wait for it," Night Vale says again, looking past you. "Wait for—there!" He points, rather dramatically, at something behind you. 

You turn around. 

There's a fandom standing in the midst of the slugtopi. He looks human, more so than you or any of your allies—white-blond hair, dark eyes that seem too huge for his face, old-fashioned clothing. The only strange things about him are his weirdly elongated fingers, and the inhuman expression of rage on his narrow, angular face. 

"Mythos," Creepypast breathes, behind you. 

"How dare you," Mythos says. His voice is soft and almost reasonable, like he really doesn't understand. It doesn't match the look on his face. "How dare you do this to my darlings?" He gestures at the puddle on the floor, where you killed the slugtopi. "How dare—

"You took our friends!" Homestuck shouts suddenly. You glance at him over your shoulder at him, and see that he's changed, subtly but definitely—if nothing else, his voice is slightly deeper and his horns are long, sharp, and slightly curved instead of stubby and rounded as usual. "What've you done with Hetalia?" 

Mythos smiles. He has entirely too many teeth for your taste. "The same thing I'll do to all of you. It takes unfathomable quantities of energy to create my shoggoth." He snaps his fingers, and a few of the slugtopi—no, shoggoth—detach themselves from the main mass and ooze towards Homestuck with disturbing speed. 

Supernatural nails two of them with a thrown handful of salt. They screech and halt, flailing as their bodies start to dissolve. That leaves two. You slice one in half, then in quarters when the halves keep trying to inch closer to Homestuck. The last one, quicker than its unfortunate brethern, makes it almost to Homestuck before Night Vale steps into its path. 

"I wouldn't." Night Vale spreads his arms—and his tentacles—wide, blocking the thing's path. It brings all of its eyes to focus on him, but he doesn't move. "Shoo." When it oozes a bit closer, Night Vale shakes his head and says something in a language that contains sounds that shouldn't be able to exist. It makes your head ache to hear it. 

The shoggoth lets out an incongruous squeak and seems to collapse in on itself, its tentacles shrinking into its body. In less than a second it's become a ball of quivering slime. 

Even Mythos looks nonplussed. 

"Night Vale, what the hell did you—" Supernatural begins. Then he reconsiders, shaking his head. "Never mind, I don't wanna know." The black-winged fandom puts both hands in his pockets. He comes out with salt in one hand and a good-sized pistol in the other. (How did he even fit that in his pocket? you wonder. And what is he doing with a pistol? A shotgun is his weapon of choice.) "Come on, you weird son of a bitch," he says, glaring at Mythos. "Sic your slimy demonspawn on us already, so I can take them out and get to you." 

"Not if I get to him first," you snarl, raising your sword up to shoulder height. You consider the distance between you and Mythos—how fast could you cover it? Could you get to him before he moved?—and decide against a frontal attack. Besides, if you did kill him you'd be in trouble with the Big Three. Again. 

Mythos folds his arms in front of him. "Ah, you are all so ungrateful. And disrespectful, as well." The shoggoth quiver with every word he speaks. "Supernatural...the, er, 'Brony' fandom...Homestuck. Creepypasta, yes? And Night Vale, I believe we met previously." He scowls, and his face becomes less human, even though it doesn't really change at all. "You owe me such a great debt." 

Either Creepypasta or Homestuck growls like some kind of wild animal. You don't take your eyes off of Mythos. 

Supernatual steps up next to you. "I'll give you one more chance," he says quietly. You can almost feel the fury running just under his words. "Back off. Hand over the fandoms you kidnapped and clear out. And you're only getting this chance because Doctor Who would give it to you...if you hadn't taken him." 

Mythos laughs again, mockingly, and raises both of his hands above his head, palms forward and open. It should be a gesture of surrender, but it carries an aura of menace, and you know that something worse than the shoggoth will come if you don't stop him. 

You shove Supernatural out of the way and leap forward, but you know that you'll never be as fast as Mythos's summoning. 

A shadow appears behind Mythos, resolving almost instantly into Creepypasta. Before he's even fully there, his inky-black tentacles snake around Mythos's throat and wrists, holding him securely. Making a perfect target. 

You cover the last few feet in one bound, your sword leading the way. With the full force of your weight behind the blade, there's barely any resistance at all.


	4. Chapter 4

You are the CREEPYPASTA FANDOM and OFF's just splattered you with blood. Again. At least it's someone else's this time. 

Mythos inhales sharply, then coughs out the breath he just took, along with some blood. You let go of him, and he collapses. He's not dead, not yet at least, but you don't think he'll cause any more trouble for a while. 

OFF raises his sword to finish the fallen fandom, but you grab his wrist. "We don't murder each other," you tell him when he looks at you. "And that's what it would be. He's down, OFF. Beaten. Leave him." 

OFF blinks both pairs of his eyes, the lower set half a second behind the upper. "He'd have killed you. All of us," he growls. He doesn't try to pull away from you, though. 

"That, or worse," you agree. "But you're not him." 

"I—" OFF hesitates, then jerks out of your grip, spinning back to face Supernatural. "Fine. Fine! Let's go find your friends before I change my mind." 

"Uh..." Brony looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. "What about those...things?" He gestures vaguely at the shoggoth that still line the walls of the room. "And that weird dude? We can't just—" 

Mythos spits out a mouthful of syllables so garbled that you can't tell if he's speaking English or his own strange, impossible language. You look down at him. 

"Foolish...ungrateful...children," he gasps. He's managed to get up to his knees, but he's clutching his chest where OFF stabbed him. You're fairly sure that he's not healing at an accelerated rate like MLP or Brony would—he's just hellishly tough and hellishly stubborn. "I—I would give you...give you kingdoms, worlds—"

"Get over yourself," Homestuck snaps. 

Mythos glares at him for a second, then looks up at you. His eyes are dark, some secret and otherworldly color that you've never seen before and can't describe. You suspect that it doesn't exist anywhere but in his eyes. "Betrayer," he spits. 

You bend down, putting yourself eye-to-eye with him. "Maybe." You can hear the deceptive gentleness in your own voice. "But you're worse. You're a monster, Mythos." You grab a fistful of his shirt and haul him to his feet. You know you're hurting him, but he doesn't show the pain. 

He's grinning, actually. "So are you, my dear unnatural descendant." 

"That's fine by me." You wrap two of your tentacles around Mythos's neck. Even though you don't squeeze, you know that he knows you can bear down and snap his vertebrae like chicken bones. "I'm a monster. I know I'm a monster. I am a monster and you took one of the two people I love most." You wrap your other two tentacles around his wrists and pull him closer. "Now how about you tell me what you did with him and the others, before I decide that I'd like to do something...monsterous to you?" 

Mythos says something in his brain-torturing language. Then he starts to laugh. 

From behind you, Night Vale translates. "In the house of the thousands the dead ones lie dreaming." His voice is solemn. 

It takes you a minute to process that. 

"You...no." Mythos is still laughing. You shake him, but he doesn't stop. "Shut up! You lying piece of—" But he's not lying, you know he's not lying because you can smell, sense, almost taste a lie, and he spoke the truth. Pokemon...no. "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" You lift him all the way off the ground as you shout, and he does stop laughing now, because you've clamped down on his throat and he can't breathe. 

You're going to kill him. No—you're going to destroy him, rip him apart until there's nothing left. He's killed your moirail, and you're going to destroy him. And after...

No. 

You won't think about what happens after that. 

Supernatural is shouting something. You can't hear him over the red roaring in your ears. You squeeze Mythos's throat harder, and yank his arms out from his sides. Just a little more force, and bones will snap, flesh will tear—

A sudden pain rips through your chest, breaking into your grief-driven rage. You look down and see a half-inch of razor-sharp metal sticking out of your chest. OFF's sword. 

Your tentacles melt into thick black smoke as OFF jerks the sword out of you. It hurts even more coming out than it did going in. Mythos collapses. So do you, but OFF catches you on the way down. 

"Bastard," you whisper. Even the single word hurts. You're pretty sure that OFF hit something vital, maybe your lung? You can't tell. 

OFF shakes his head. "Hey pony-boy, get your tail up here!" he shouts over his shoulder. To you he says, "You just told me that we don't kill each other. What's wrong, you hit your head when you passed out earlier?" 

In the second before Brony is close enough to hear, you whisper, "Don't let him heal me. Let me die. Kill me." 

"Stupid," OFF mutters. Maybe he says something else, but you're not listening. 

It's infinitely easier to let the darkness—unconsiousness or death, you don't know (or care) which—take you.

* * *

You are the HOMESTUCK FANDOM. You should be doing something. You can't think of what, though. Not to save your life. Everyone else is moving, shouting, doing—and you're paralyzed. 

There are only a few things you can do. A few ways you could react to what Night Vale said a minute ago. You have no control over which will happen, but they flash through your mind anyway. 

You could stay frozen until someone forces you to act. 

You could go sober. Lose your mind, like Creepypasta did. 

You could believe that Mythos lied and Hetalia is still alive. 

You imagine a six-sided die, with two black, two red, and two white sides, spinning and spinning in the air. That's all this comes down to—blind idiot chance. 

The die falls onto imaginary felt, rolls a few times...and ends up with white facing up. Hope, belief, whatever you want to call it—but Hetalia is alive, for you at least. Until it's absolutely proven otherwise. 

And Mythos is going to tell you where, even if you have to kill him. Even if you have to have Brony bring him back to life so you can kill him more than once. 

You look past Brony and OFF, who are huddled over Creepypasta, and Supernatural, who's shouting at all three of them. Mythos is already trying to get up. He's made it to his hands and knees now. Blood's dripping from his mouth, and his head is lowered so you can't see his face. As you take the first step towards him, he slowy looks up, straight into your eyes. 

"You owe me as great a debt as any." His voice is raspy and wet and so quiet that you shouldn't be able to hear him. But these words are meant for you. "This is not the end." 

Then he reaches for his throat, grasping a pendant that you hadn't even noticed before. It's large and golden, something like the pentagram on Supernatural's shirt but formed of tentacles that seem to squirm. It hurts your head to look at the thing. The blood on Mythos's fingers smears across the gold. 

He grins at you maliciously. You can see blood on his sharp teeth. 

And then, suddenly, he's gone. 

"No!" You wonder who's shouting and realize that it's you. "You grub-sucking—" 

Something touches your shoulder—Night Vale. You'd forgotten about him. "Homestuck," he says, in that oddly calm and oddly calming voice that he sometimes uses, "perhaps we should go to see if we might find the others." 

"But he—yeah. Okay." Night Vale is right, you realize reluctantly. Mythos is gone, there's no telling where, and you need to find Hetalia. Even though you know you shouldn't, you ask, "You think Mythos was lying? That they're still alive?" 

"Oh, no. Mythos never lies." Night Vale curls one tentacle around your shoulders, pulling you along with him. The shoggoth whimper and cringe back as he walks past. "But the dead—they do not dream. They are dreams, and dreams cannot dream, whether of themselves or of reality. I thought you would have known that, Homestuck, if anyone did." 

"I...well, yeah." You understand the mechanics of life as a fandom a lot better than almost anyone. After all, the basics and intricacies of your existance—and the existances of all the fandoms—are drawn from your webcomic. Strife specibuses (which is why weapons change to what they need to be, and why you can call them into your hands when you need them), the many Lands, captchalogs...and dreaming. "Yeah," you say again, with more conviction. 

"Shoo," Night Vale says to a shoggoth. It squeaks and oozes aside, revealing a door. He opens it, and gestures for you to go through. 

The hallway beyond is dark, and smells like water left standing until it turns black. There are doors every twenty feet or so, as far as you can see, and they all look exactly the same. 

You pull your weapon—a small, red-and-green-striped sickle—from wherever it is when you're not using it, and use it to carve a deep, ragged X into the door. The last thing you need is to get lost. 

"Good thinking," Night Vale remarks, and adds, "Look down." 

You do. The floor is plain grey, probably concrete, and marked with scratches, scrapes, and scars of varying depth and size. There's also a thick, smeared trail of something that looks disturbingly like blood, as if someone was dragged. 

"That's blood, isn't it." You don't make it a question. It's blood, you don't need a closer look to tell that. "Do you think—" 

"That your friends are at the other end of the trail? Of course." 

The bloody smear seems to go on forever. When it finally turns, it leads into a locked door. Night Vale examines it carefully, and suggests, "I can go get Supernatural and—" 

You take a few steps back to get a running start, and ram your shoulder against the door. There's no real give, but you hear something crack. Probably the latch or hinges. Maybe your ribs. 

Back up. Hit it again. You're going to have bruises. Hit it again, and it hurts but seeing Supernatural get it open would hurt worse, this is better than seeing the pain and fear buried so deep in his eyes that even he might not know it's there— 

The door slams open the third time you ram it, spilling you onto the floor. You hit your head hard enough to see stars. 

"Well," Night Vale says thoughtfully, hauling you back to your feet and steadying you as you almost go down again, "this is certainly interesting." 

You shake his hands off. "Oh..." This room smells like musk, like sweat, like a wild animal. The ceiling is coated with what looks like moss but glows with a faintly green luminescence, casting enough light to clearly see the strangely fleshy-looking walls—and the fandoms bound against them. You start looking at faces, looking for your moirail. Legend of Zelda...Harry Potter...Doctor Who, thank the Green Sun, and Sherlock right next to him...Marvel...and—"Hetalia!" His shirt is gone and he's unconscious, but it's him. 

"Homestuck, perhaps we should—" Night Vale starts. You stop paying attention to him. 

Instead, you grab one of the straps holding Hetalia up and pull. It doesn't snap. It doesn't even stretch as you put your whole weight against it, staying close against Hetalia's skin. It's not really a strap, either—it's fleshy and faintly warm, much warmer than your moirail's clammy skin. 

(You refuse to think that he feels like a corpse. You aren't thinking that. You won't think that.) 

Night Vale puts one hand on your shoulder, pulling you back a bit. One of his tentacles snakes past you and worms its way under the strap across Hetalia's chest, pulling it up and away. "Cut it," he says. There's a tiny, almost-imperceptible bit of strain in his voice. 

You carefully slip your sickle into the the gap between skin and weird tentacle-strap, and slice the latter neatly in two. The thing bleeds a dark liquid onto your hands and shrinks into the wall. 

All of the other straps holding Hetalia up abruptly let go, retracting into the wall. He falls forward, onto you. 

"Hetalia!" He's not breathing, you realize. You grab for his hand as you sink to your knees—there's no pulse there, either. "No, no, come on, no...come on, don't leave me, Hetalia..." You hug him to yourself, burying your face in his chest. "Please, Hetalia..." He smells of musk and blood, instead of like pasta and old maps. That, more than anything else, drives the pure reality of it home. "Don't leave me," you murmur, your voice muffled enough that you can't understand your own voice. "Don't..." 

"Homestuck," Night Vale says gently. 

"Go away." You won't let go. You will stay right here, in this moment between heartbeats, until Hetalia wakes up. Until you wake up out of this hellish dream. It has to be a dream. 

"Homestuck, you can't help him—" 

"Fuck you!" Suddenly you're on your feet, sickle in one hand, a fistful of Night Vale's purple shirt in the other, your face a few inches away from his. You don't remember moving at all. "You don't know—you don't—you don't have a moirail, you don't even have friends, and—you don't know, you can't—I can't...I..." 

Night Vale reaches up and touches your face. He doesn't pull away, doesn't try to push your sickle away from his face. He just touches your cheek, and takes his hand away. There's a thin, pale-green liquid on his fingers. Your tears. "Homestuck," he says quietly, "please, don't." 

You let go of him. Does he even know how close you were to going pure grimdark—how close to killing him—you were for a second? Wiping at your eyes, you start, "Night Vale..." 

He's not listening. He's staring past you, and an expression that you can't define is spreading across his face. Fear? Surprise? No...wonder. Awe. 

Night Vale grabs your shoulders and spins you around. Before you can protest, you see that on the concrete floor, Hetalia is stirring slightly. 

You fall to your knees. You can't think beyond a huge, pure sense of relief and disbelief. This time when you grab Hetalia and haul him up for a hug, his arms go around you. You're stunned by how weak he seems, like whatever Mythos did to him drained all his strength away. 

"H-H-Homestuck—" His voice is weak, too, and almost a sob. "I d-dreamed...you were d-dead, I killed you, it w-w-was so dark—" 

"Shoosh. It's okay." You're crying. Hetalia's alive. He's alive, and your breath catches as you realize that all the other fandoms are alive too. "It's okay, Hetalia, it's all right, no one's dead—" 

"H-Homestuck, you're sqeezing too h-hard." 

You let go immediately. "Sorry—" 

He's smiling. There's tears in his eyes, but he's smiling at you. He puts one hand on your shoulder and wipes the tears off your face with the other. "Homestuck...what happened?" 

"Uh..." Such a long story, and you'd like nothing more than to sit here and tell what you know of it, but you can't. Not right this second. Not until you get the others down. "I'll explain everything in a minute, okay Hetalia? Just...stay right here." 

He nods, and you stand back up. Night Vale's already working his tentacles under the strap across Marvel's chest. 

You cut the strap, catch Marvel before he hits the floor, lay him down gently, and move to the next fandom.

* * *

You are the CREEPYPASTA FANDOM. You're lying in a bed, probably a hospital bed if your last memory is right. You hope it isn't right. Someone is holding your hands, two someones, one on each side. 

You don't want to open your eyes. You don't want to be awake. Maybe if you don't open your eyes, sleep will take you again. 

Someone is arguing with someone else, somewhere close. You focus on them. 

"He need to wake the fuck up." You know that voice. That's OFF. 

"He will, sooner or later." That's Supernatural, being as soothing as he can be—which is not very. But he's trying, which is uncharacteristic of him. "We just need to wait—" 

"How soon is sooner, featherbrain? A day? A week? How late is later? Months, years? For all you know, he can just shut down and choose to never wake up." Frustration—and maybe something more, maybe even worry—is roughening OFF's already-gravelly voice into a growl. "Get one of those doctor-y fandoms, Bones or House or—I don't know, somebody—to give him something, make him wake up—" 

"Calm down—" 

"Don't touch me!" 

"We need to wait." Supernatural sighs. "OFF, you hate Creepypasta. You tried to kill him. Why do you even care about—" 

"What would you do," OFF says softly, all of his rage suddenly gone (or at least contained), "if it was Homestuck in there?" 

Supernatural doesn't answer. You know the answer, though, and OFF surely does as well—Supernatural would do anything to wake Homestuck up. Because they hate each other, but there's a weird, deep bond between them as well. They're kimesises. 

And maybe OFF is your kimesis. 

You don't want to think about that. That's the kind of thing that can keep you up at night, and you want the oblivion of sleep right now. From what OFF said, you don't think you're going to get it. Even if you do manage to sleep again, he'll be in here soon enough. Better to admit you're awake now. 

You open your eyes. 

Immediately, you hear MLP shriek your name at a volume more than sufficient to shatter glass, and she pounces onto you, driving most of the air out of your lungs. You get a weird sense of deja vu—this has happened before, you know that this has happened before, hasn't it? "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh—Creepy, you scared me so bad—" 

"Ease up," whoever's holding your hand on the other side says, and laughs. "Don't strangle him." 

No, wait. 

You know who that is. You know who that is, and you push MLP off yourself enough so you can turn your head and see him. 

"Pokemon." You expect the name to come out in a shout, but suddenly you can't catch your breath. A whisper is all you can manage. "You—he said—" 

Pokemon leans across and wraps his arms around both you and MLP, squeezing hard. "'Dead but dreaming' isn't 'dead.' I'm okay,   
Creepypasta. I'm not going anywhere." 

"Thank you," you whisper. Then you exhale, and finally, for the first time since Homestuck banged on your door asking about Hetalia, you let yourself relax.

* * *

You are...

What's in a name? 

Lovecraft. Cthulu Mythos. Mythos. You have been loved, you have been hated, you have been damn near worshiped. 

And now. Here you are, spread-eagled on hard stone, red-black blood draining out of you. It hurts, it hurts so much, almost as much as being forgotten, being reviled, and being—insult of insults, injury of injuries—being dismissed as worthless. 

But you know it will heal. The deep wound—so deep that you think that the four-eyed fandom's sword may have actually grazed your heart—will close. As long as you keep chanting—ia, ia, ia, ia— the darkness will knit your torn flesh into a unscarred whole. 

You will heal. You swear it. And you will go back to the places of the light, and find the ones that hurt you—Creepypasta, OFF, Supernatural, Homestuck, Night Vale—and you will break them, break their minds, and cast them gibbering and screaming into the void, into oblivion, into a fate worse than death. You swear it. 

As you said to the horned, grey-skinned fandom—to Homestuck: this is not the end.


End file.
